This invention pertains to trailers and particularly to a specialized trailer for carrying a cutting head of a combine and having special features to simplify the loading and unloading of the cutting head onto the trailer.
As farm machinery has become larger to accomplish a wider band of operation, it has also become more clumsy to handle on the roads and highways. Most implements to be used in row-crop farming, and many used in other farming are now much wider than the usual width limits on highways. For machinery which is regularly carried on highways such as combines used in wheat fields, or used for custom harvesting of row crops, this width requires special accommodation.
Ordinarily, combines are built with removeable and replaceable cutting heads. Cutters for wheat or similar small grains are of somewhat different conformation than those used for corn or similar row crops. Therefore, the heads are made to be readily interchangeable.
This construction also simplifies transportation. Because the power and threshing unit is ordinarily about as wide as the highway limits, it can be loaded onto a tailer and carried facing its normal direction of travel. The head, being of about that dimension in a fore and aft direction can be easily carried by a trailer on which the head is loaded perpendicular to its normal direction of travel.
Loading of the head onto the trailer should be a simple task because the head is built so that it can ordinarily be lifted well above ground level by the power unit. Thus, when the combine is turned at the end of a row or when the unit is being driven from one field to another, the cutter is raised. All that is required for loading is to raise the head, drive up to the side of a properly-proportional trailer, lower the head onto the trailer, disconnect it and drive the power unit away. Unfortunately, any trailer must have a reasonable balance of its load over the axle or axles, or the trailer cannot be safely driven. To balance the load, the axle should be nearly centered under the load. This balance would appear to be no problem until it is realized that the wheel of the trailer where the trailer is balanced interferes with the combine power unit as it approaches the side of the trailer.
The solution proposed by my invention is to provide for an axle which can be moved from its normal load-carrying position to a far rear position for loading and then returned to the carrying position for hauling.
A more complete understanding of the invention may be had from a study of the following description and the figures.